BETTER THAN A FAIR TRADE
Bean-to-bar chocolate makers see the sweet benefits of working directly with suppliers
Michael Sacco spends most of his days with his team roasting, grinding, tempering and packaging every piece of chocolate made on the premises of ChocoSol, a learning community and chocolate social enterprise in Toronto that also grows ingredients such as mint on its roof and uses food waste as compost.
All told, ChocoSol makes 1.4 tonnes of chocolate per month, creating 10 or so different types of chocolates for eating and at least four Mexican-style drinking chocolates, in addition to roasting more than 1,200 pounds of coffee.
But at least once a year, Sacco, the founder of ChocoSol, or one of his colleagues flies to some remote part of Mexico to connect with and learn from the farmers who produce the beans the company uses in its chocolate.
On his latest visit in January, Sacco and Chrystal Porter, ChocoSol’s chocolatier, spent a day in the Central Valley of Oaxaca learning from Zapotec women how to make the traditional drinking chocolate, tejate, using a stone metate, a tool for processing food.
They also shared ChocoSol’s chocolates with their coffee growers in Santa María Zacatepec and checked on the progress of worm composting and soil making by the local Mixtec community. Sacco then spent a week in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas province, where he worked with Don Flor and his family to harvest, dry and ferment cocoa beans. The Flor family has supplied ChocoSol with cacao for the past decade.
Unlike larger chocolate producers, ChocoSol makes a point of working directly with farmers. And, unlike many other chocolatiers, ChocoSol has never signed up with Fairtrade International, the non-profit that sets minimum prices and other standards to help disadvantaged producers and workers in developing countries.
Retail sales of chocolate in Canada grew four per cent in 2015, driven largely by commodity price increases as opposed to volume. But Fairtrade-certified chocolate sales by volume have been growing at an annual rate of 35 per cent in Canada and 27 per cent internationally.
ChocoSol sets its sights on higher standards than those set by Fairtrade, as do a growing number of small North American beanto-bar makers trying to put more money in the hands of their raw material suppliers.
For example, the Fairtrade price for organic cacao produced in Mexico is $3.10 per kilogram, but ChocoSol pays almost double that for its cacao from the Central Valley and more than five times the standard rate for rare albino beans that come from the nearby Chinantec community.
“I have never paid anything around conventional or fairtrade price for cocoa,” Sacco said. “Sometimes I have paid from 30 per cent more or even five times more. That’s not including the cost of supporting an eco-regenerative environment, (which) goes back directly to the farmers since 2003.”
Another chocolatier, Taza Chocolate, based in Somerville, Mass., said it pays at least 67 cents per kilogram above Fairtrade prices. It also publishes an annual transparency report with details of its arrangements with suppliers.
Similarly, LetterPress Chocolate, Los Angeles’ first bean-to-bar chocolate maker, pays above Fairtrade’s requirements and has invested in more than 20,000 cacao trees for a farming and forestry project in Guatemala started by its local partner farm Izabal Agroforest.
LetterPress also works with Kokoa Kamili, a cooperative based in Mbingu, Tanzania, while Taza sources from Produits Des Iles SA, a cooperative based in Haiti, among other growers.
The cooperatives are formed by small growers to take advantage of centralized fermenting, drying and sorting equipment, which allow them to contribute to exports while ensuring quality consistency.
Most ChocoSol suppliers are “small plot intensive indigenous farmers, they feed their families, protect the water sheds, preserve the habitats for animals, they might feed their neighbours and they have a little bit left over for trade,” Sacco said.
These farmers are smaller than the average cacao grower, and have neither the skill nor the financial resources to go through the Fairtrade certification process.
Another reason for chocolate makers not registering with Fairtrade is that they’re too small to pay fees to a third party for a direct transaction, said David Menkes, owner of LetterPress. “There is no official direct trade certification, because by its very nature, there is no third party involved,” he said.
Conventional chocolate makers usually leave the cacao sourcing to a broker or trading floor, whereas bean-to-bar makers work directly with the farmers behind the beans.
But Marika Escaravage, public relations adviser at Fairtrade Canada, said direct and fair trade can exist side by side.
“There are companies that offer Fairtrade-certified chocolates in Canada that are not only involved in the fair-trade system and contributing to it, but also working directly with the farmers that are Fairtrade certified,” she said.
For example, one larger chocolate company that is Fair tradecertified and works directly with farmers is Camino, based in Ot- tawa, whose chocolates are sold in more than 1,000 stores in Canada.
However, Escaravage recognizes the efforts that bean-to-bar chocolate makers are making on their own. “There are small companies starting out and for whatever reason cannot get their products certified,” she said. “We do hear stories all the time of people saying, ‘If I do want to try to act ethically, I will go on the Fairtrade website and see what standards they have and make sure my relationships can live up to those standards.’”
Though ChocoSol is not registered with Fairtrade, Sacco relies on and supports certification.
“It’s an important stepping stone. We need to support those certifications, especially when we can’t vouch for the supply chain. That’s when those certifications are very important,” he said.
What’s more, ChocoSol relies on certification for other ingredients in its chocolates. “We buy all our sugar organic, Fairtrade and Rainforest certified,” Sacco said. “Cocoa butter (as well). All of the things we are not buying from origin, we buy certified.”
Non-certified artisanal chocolate makers have helped cooperatives such as Kokoa Kamili in Tanzania grow and acquire the financial means to become certified.
“We started to work with Kokoa Kamili a few years ago. They didn’t have any certifications at all,” LetterPress’s Menkes said. “Enough of us got together and started to pay these premiums, because (Kokoa Kamili) were paying a premium to the farmers. They were able to afford organic certification, which then opens a lot more avenues for them, because there are manufacturers out there who only want to work with certified cacao.”
Taza is not Fairtrade-certified, but it is organic certified and it insists that farmers get organic credentials for their production.
Jesse Last, Taza’s sourcing manger based in Colombia, noted that there’s also a benefit to the farmers.
“Because we are an organic company, the farmers need to be organic certified,” he said. “Even though it’s more work to be organic certified to sell to Taza, the fact that we are paying really good prices makes it worthwhile.”
University of Toronto professor Jennifer Sumner, whose research focuses on sustainable food systems, said being certified both organic and fair trade makes an ideal combination.
“The great strength of the organic movement is the environmental protection … and the great strength of the Fairtrade movement is its social side,” she said.
“When these two movements work together and produce Fairtrade organic products, then they bolster each other’s strengths.”
Though ChocoSol and Letterpress do not have organic certifications, they say they set high environmental standards.
ChocoSol has developed projects to regenerate the areas it works in, such as sharing its knowledge of worm composting with growers and supporting the regeneration of a mid-sized shade tree for jaguar cacao in Chinantla. LetterPress cites its investment in the cacao trees with Izabal Agroforest.
One of the toughest challenges for chocolate makers such as ChocoSol is showing consumers that they are good corporate citizens, even without certification logos on their products.
Byron Koss, who looks after market sales and urban farming at ChocoSol, said he tries to be as transparent as possible with customers. “People come and visit us at markets, we’re standing right there and we can explain the products, answer any questions they have about the ingredients, and they can also come into the kitchen,” he said.
Sacco said this openness has helped ChocoSol’s sales jump by 20 per cent each year over the past three years, and they topped $1 million in 2016.
It’s an important stepping-stone. We need to support those certifications, especially when we can’t vouch for the supply chain. That’s when those certifications are very important.